Objective: Write a 5-7-page double-spaced paper that zeroes in on one key development moment in your country’s development history.
Format: 5-7-page paper, 1-inch margins on all sides, double-spaced. If any graphics, charts, or images are used, they must be labeled in a clear and understandable way–you can either place them in the text of your paper or at the end in an appendix and refer to them in the text of your paper. These will not count toward your page totals.
A bibliography is required and is not part of the 5-7-page count. The bibliography should be included at the end with full citations of where you got all the information. See 
for more details on the bibliography (in the Files section of our bCourses site). You may also consult the .
Detailed Explanation of Assignment:
Step 1: Refer back to your development history timeline (your first project) and choose one event on the timeline to focus on for this paper. While in theory your key development moment does not have to come directly from the timeline, this paper is essentially asking you to focus in on one of the most major moments/turning points of your country’s development. As a result, I somewhat expect that it would appear somewhere in your timeline/first project.
If you are unsure what to choose (or debating between two moments/events), refer back to some of your sources or do a little digging into more sources on the events you are considering. Choose to do your paper on both what you find most interesting and what you find to be a critical moment in your country’s development history.
As a general rule of thumb, key events will likely take place after 1949 (the beginning of the global development project). They can be more recent (e.g. in the past 10 years) but again, you will need to defend and show/prove that this is a critical event for development in your country. That being said, in most countries, pivotal development projects, policies, and shifts occurred throughout the 50s to the early 90s. Again, you do not necessarily have to pick the event that has the MOST impact–that can be difficult to discern as most countries have multiple key moments–but just be sure to pick one that is indeed a key moment in development.
NOTE: The key development moment you choose CAN be BAD for development too–it does not have to have a positive impact on growth.
Step 2: Once you have chosen a key development moment, start gathering library research on these issues. Look for at least 5 academic/published sources on your development moment and read only the most applicable chapters that help you understand it.
You are seeking to answer the following 3 questions:
- Why was this moment so crucial to development (for better or for worse) in your country?
- How did this moment come about? What were the conditions that explain its rise/appearance?
- What were the results of this moment? How did it change development in your country?
There may be some overlap between 1 and 3, but overall, you have to explain what came before the moment, the moment itself, and then what came afterwards. Question 1 is your overarching thesis and argument. Questions 2 and 3 help you build or answer question 1.
Your thesis should essentially outline the core, foundational answer to these three questions. And the rest of the paper should be devoted to answering each of these questions, perhaps moving through in chronological order what caused the development moment, what the development moment itself was, and what were the results of the moment. This is just one suggestion of how to write the paper, but it fits logically what you are trying to do.
Step 3: Write the paper. Convince your reader of the importance of the development moment you chose by doing the following:
- In your thesis, clearly articulate what the main effects/results are of this moment.
- Start by explaining how the moment came to exist and what the factors are that allowed it to occur.
- Provide the important details of what the development moment was and why it was so important.
- Now specifically and in detail explain how the moment caused the results you discussed in the thesis.
As you can tell, the linkages between 2, 3, and 4 are what will establish a credible and provable thesis. This is what you will be ultimately graded on. These linkages do not necessarily have to be found in your library research sources (they can be original arguments or analysis that you connect together using information from your sources). But I imagine at least some of them will draw on what other people have discovered and argued–this is to be expected (you do not necessarily need your own, personal, original argument in this paper).
Make sure that you provide in-text citations to any sentence that is based on an idea that you are taking from one of your sources. Please OVER CITE (cite too much) rather than under cite (cite too little) (i.e. when in doubt, please cite). I am somewhat expecting that a lot of your sentences will have citations because most of your information that you learned for this paper will be based on things that you read.
Remember, anything that you take VERBATIM from the sources must be quoted and cited. In general, prefer paraphrasing over quoting directly unless you intend on discussing the language or word usage of the quotation.
Step 4: Finish off the assignment with your bibliography in ASA format and you are good to go!
FAQs:
- What are some good strategies to be successful on this assignment?
READ THE RUBRIC! You’ll notice that a KEY is to not summarize a ton of history, but instead, stick to your argument and throughout the paper, allude back to this argument. Every paragraph needs to clearly be explained as to what it does to proving your thesis. Another way to put it is that the reader should clearly understand how each paragraph relates to establishing and answer one of the three questions that your paper is trying to answer.
While you will be providing context, it should not read like a bland summarization of history, but rather an analytical explanation of the key development moment in your country’s history. You should be doing a lot of explaining the cause and effect of things as it relates to your key development moment.
- I don’t really know how to use the library (or I haven’t really had a chance to use the library before). I am also having trouble finding information. What should I do?
If you start your research early, then this really will not be a problem. See our Page for more.
The easiest answer to this is for you to reach out to a research librarian. You can do that on our library website: . You can also look up a subject librarian and reach out to them: . These librarians are absolutely incredible–they know where everything is and if they do not know, they know how to find out where things are! You can also go in-person to the reference center, where there are reference staff and librarians who can help you without any appointment. You can find information about them here: .
Refer back to the library presentation we had during week two of class! Between all these resources, I am absolutely confident you will have no trouble completing this assignment!
- Can I use X resource in my paper? Is it a good source?
Do NOT cite random websites, blogs, or encyclopedic type sources. Instead, any information needs to be resourced from a reputable, published source. If a blog or website has some information that you used, find out where they got it and cite that source. A general rule of thumb is no .com sites (unless you can justify it).
